To accommodate the busy and often harried traveler,
toothbrushes have been designed that can be used away from home, for example on a trip, or that can be offered for single use in establishments receiving the public, such as hotels and restaurants. These disposable toothbrushes have eliminated the need for a separate tube of toothpaste by incorporating in or on the brush a sufficient dose of a flavored toothpaste for brushing the teeth, the flavor being added to encourage oral hygiene practices. Many such prior art disposable toothbrushes are complex and/or expensive, as where a mechanism is included for distributing the toothpaste onto the bristles just prior to use. In other prior art disposable toothbrushes, the toothpaste is preapplied to the bristles, but such toothbrushes have proved unstable, in that the flavoring dissipates after a relatively short period of time, which is impractical as commercial considerations require a reasonable shelf life. As a result, prior art disposable toothbrushes have, for the most part, not proved commercially successful, primarily because no known prior art disposable toothbrush has satisfied the multiple criteria of a preapplied toothpaste thereby eliminating the need for a distribution mechanism, a reasonable shelf life, and a low manufacturing cost. Regarding manufacturing costs, it is well known that service establishments, such as hotels, will not provide to their patrons disposable items which exceed a preestablished cost.
Hospitals, of course, also provide toothbrushes to their patients. Typically, hospitals provide a toothbrush and a separate tube of toothpaste, the tube typically including sufficient toothpaste for a limited number of uses. This, however, poses two problems. First, there is a risk of transmission of infectious disease, as when a patient places his/her toothbrush on a sink, etc. Secondly, in the case of a patient having use of only one arm, as is sometimes the case when patients are treated intravenously, it is difficult for the patient to manipulate the toothpaste onto the bristles of the toothbrush.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for an individually wrapped, inexpensive disposable toothbrush having a toothpaste composition distributed over the bristles of the toothbrush and in which the flavoring does not dissipate over a reasonable shelf life.